


The Sun, Reversed

by The_Divine_Fool



Category: Warriors - Erin Hunter
Genre: Short, Tarot, blood clan, fight, reversed, sun - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-30
Updated: 2014-11-30
Packaged: 2018-02-27 12:38:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2693279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Divine_Fool/pseuds/The_Divine_Fool
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His eyes turn away, sad and cold. “They could kill us, Bone. But they don't know that I was only ever here to be killed, an accidental villain in a grand scheme of good versus evil, all to reveal a flock of accidental murderers. They don't know that they created this demon.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sun, Reversed

“ _Kill_ us?” Scourge snarled, carelessly spraying feathers from his feast of fowl. Bone's eyes followed the pigeon down, gray like dawn, as it tumbled into a corner of his leader's headquarters and then, as if intimidated by the metallic echo of Scourge's snarl, pulled into pieces and fled on the wind. 

“You fool, they could never kill us. We've herded dogs with the flicker of our shadows, slaughtered them while they slept in their soft Twoleg caverns, played gambling games with their bones in the moonlight; we've chased bears from our territory and wounded its young; we've outsmarted the Twolegs the forest cats so fear for food and shelter. We live side by side with death, undressed and willing, by our error and by our code, and still it has not taken us,”

The young black tom lurches to his paws, reinforced claws tipped with purple pigeon blood, joints creaking and bones showing glumly through his ragged pelt. 

“ _Deathless_ , more like. If they manage to lay a claw on me and pray their gods allow them to strike a killing blow then my corpse will sink beneath their dirt and my broken claws will dig until I reach a place where the water beats and boils like blood. I will feast on their dead beneath the earth's swollen breast until they wake in the night screeching, wondering what is tearing at the fibers of their souls and why their gods would allow such evil to spoil their lands.”

“And you,” Scourge's pale ice eyes turned to his large deputy, narrowed down his muzzle with a clouded, mocking softness. “The dirt will never embrace you, never pull you down to my sick feast. The earth forsakes you, and after pulling away your skin and muscle and sinew it will heave you back up to the surface. _Bone!_ Bones to reflect the dying day, to entice the wayward crow; bones to show them their clay caricatures of justice day in and day out. And they will separate your remains, bury you again and again, and again the ground will reject you, spitting claws and teeth to make them stumble and fear and regret the day they spilled our blood.”

His eyes turn away, sad and cold. “They could kill us, Bone. But they don't know that I was only ever here to be killed, an accidental villain in a grand scheme of good versus evil, all to reveal a flock of accidental murderers. They don't know that they created this demon.”

He walked away, back into the dark recesses of his den, claws faintly clicking against the asphalt. Bone rose to his paws, long sturdy legs carrying him well above eye-level of most of the other cats. Within hearing distance were some of Scourge's Guard: Brick, Boulder, Chain, Worm, Ox-eye. Heads all bowed, eyes blank and paws still. Eerie, and reverent, Bone realized. Scourge had fashioned a god of himself, for Blood Clan. No one asked about their part in the grand scheme, if their fates were those of pawns in a predestined battle or otherwise; all they knew was that they were Scourge's accidental knights, code forged in blood and conduct only a vim ruthlessness. 

What did that make him? Bone wondered. Why did Scourge refuse to pull him down into the dirty, restless evil of the god? Why did he make him a sleeping metaphor, immortal and unforgotten? Less like a sacrificial knight and more like an unwilling bishop. 

Bone ducked his head to enter Scourge's lair, a labyrinth of metal and plastic bins, litter and cardboard, fabric and feathers and bones. He padded to the back, shuffling on his belly through a dark gizzard of rags and emerging just in time to see his leader fall onto his side with a weak hiss, tail lashing and breathing heavily. 

“Scourge...” Bone started with the hint of an inquiry, but shuddered at the harshness, the impersonal and unfitting tone of his leader's name.

The rims of Scourge's eyes and the skin between his toes were yellowed with jaundice. Flies bred in a puddle nearby. _Bone! Bones to reflect the dying day..._ Bone realized that maybe Scourge felt the same way about _his_ name. Like maybe there was something left unexpressed and suffocated in the uttering of an inaccurate moniker. 

"You don't have to do this,” The black and white tom mewed quietly, uncertain how exactly to breathe life into his emotions. He was not as eloquent as his leader. 

A single wide pupil lingered between the deputy's eyes, where a wellspring of scar tissue surged over the bridge of his nose and over his eye. “I must. It's why I was created.” 

Scourge was racked with shivers. He looked too old and too worn for his young age, as if this was the world calling in its chips on the tom's life, giving him a certain grip of hours before his time was up. 

Bone wanted suddenly and powerfully to take Scourge away from this place, away from the garbage and the city, away from the forests and the blood. Just _away_. Instead he picked his way carefully around the feline god and settled down in the soft litter, belly warm against the other's spine, and curled around the younger cat as best he could. Never good with words; actions will do. 

“Why is it,” Scourge rasped, breathed in sharply. “That chasing bears didn't seem half as dangerous as attacking a bunch of fat forest cats does now?” 

Bone had no answer for him. 

“I don't want you to die, old friend,” Scourge murmured. “I suppose I don't want to die either, but... that is not so important. If you do, I'd like you to go somewhere warm. And dry. Somewhere there's a sun, just...reversed. The important things will be small things, the light restful and the night empowering.” 

“Will we be in the same place?” He grumbled. 

“I hope not. I hope you are not so hateful as me, not so weak or deceitful. I hope when you kill, you kill for something.” 

Bone thought he only ever killed for someone. 

The deputy pressed his nose to Scourge's temple and thumped his tail down over the other. “I hope I'm there when they kill you, and I'll go with you, I promise. I'll take you to where the sun rises in reverse. I don't even know what that means, but I'll do it. I think I was created for it.” 


End file.
